Celebrity Big Brother: bonking bonkers in TV’s Bedlam

You know Celebrity Big Brother is dead when something better and harder-edged comes along to replace it. The Star trails the new show on its cover: “VIOLENT BBC STAR PULLED OUT Of HOUSE – Locked in ‘padded cell’ by security.” Slap a few cameras on the walls and you’ve a new take on Bedlam, the Bethlem Royal Hospital, where the insane were locked inside to be gawped at by the well of mind and examined by the sinister.

And the language hasn’t changed much since those dark days in the history of mental health treatment. “Bonkers Kim Woodburn,” begins the Star’s story. After or during a televised “row” with Jamie O’Hara, a former footballer once married to serial footballer-dater Danielle Lloyd, “the wild-eyed How Clean is Your House? star” [answer: it’s ****ing filthy] was “locked in a side room”, where she remained for the rest of the night.

Peering down at the CBB Petri Dish, we also learn that O’Hara “got hot and steamy” with Bianca Gascoigne, former footballer Paul Gascoigne’s step-daughter. “Producers think it is a matter of time before a full-blown romp,” we’re told.

We’ll leave you with César de Saussure’s account of Bedlam during his 1725 tour of London’s sights.

…either side of which are a large number of little cells where lunatics of every description are shut up, and you can get a sight of these poor creatures, little windows being let into the doors. Many inoffensive madmen walk in the big gallery. On the second floor is a corridor and cells like those on the first floor, and this is the part reserved for dangerous maniacs, most of them being chained and terrible to behold. On holidays numerous persons of both sexes, but belonging generally to the lower classes, visit this hospital and amuse themselves watching these unfortunate wretches, who often give them cause for laughter. On leaving this melancholy abode, you are expected by the porter to give him a penny but if you happen to have no change and give him a silver coin, he will keep the whole sum and return you nothing